ASSESSMENT OF INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS Review of the 2007-2012 Strategic Plan Planning and Assessment Council, June 2013. The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art GOAL A. Ensure faculty strength by appropriately expanding the size of the faculty and by providing effective, ongoing professional development for faculty members. A1. Establish ten new endowed faculty chairs within the five-year plan period. Not achieved. No new endowed chairs were established. A2. Create a net increase of ten full time or proportional faculty lines. Not achieved. New full time and proportional were hired over the period of the strategic plan but only into existing lines. Overall there was a net decrease in full time faculty (four) and proportional (one). A3. Ensure that members of underrepresented groups are actively pursued and encouraged to apply for open faculty positions and, through the existing faculty search processes, increase the diversity of faculty at all levels. Not achieved. A4. Develop new policies for faculty release time, collaborative and team teaching over the next three years. Not achieved. A5. Develop and recommend new guidelines for desired class sizes for each category, i.e., studio, laboratory or lecture course over the next two years. Achieved. In The School of Art maximum number of students per class is now officially capped at 15 and minimum is set at 10 for non-prerequisite courses, however in some studio courses faculty may have classes considerably larger. In the School of Engineering class size has been generally determined by the new accommodations in 41CSq. Non-physics lectures are set at 30 tough may rise to 35. Laboratory courses are limited for safety and facilities to normally 16 maximum. In Humanities and Social Science core courses student enrollments are now capped at 18, down from 20. A6. Define a comprehensive ongoing program for intellectual and professional growth, including competitively awarded grants. Establish sufficient internal support and institutionalize the program through the budgetary process over the next two years. 1 Not achieved. With the exception of the Benjamin Menschel Faculty Fellowship, that funds curriculum development projects for the development of new courses involving collaboration between members of at least two of the four Faculties at The Cooper Union, there have been no additions to grants or programs contributing to intellectual and professional growth. A7. Provide increased support to enhance faculty opportunities to secure external fellowships and grants for scholarship, research, and creative work, and for faculty- student collaborations over the next five years. Partially achieved. The C. V. Starr foundation now provides support for all faculties seeking institutional grants. A8. Plan expanded access to pedagogical support for faculty, including access to technology-based teaching tools, language arts and communication skills, over the next two years. Partially achieved. Renovation of The Foundation Building improved the facility of some classrooms up to the same level of pedagogical technology as 41CSq, the new academic building, opened in 2009. The Strategic plan period saw the full roll-out and widespread adoption of Moodle as the learning management software and the assignment of a member of the IT department to handle system maintenance and faculty support. A9. Plan professional development opportunities for faculty, including seminars dealing with co-curricular needs such as communications skills, student mentoring, effectiveness with diverse student populations, ongoing. Not achieved. A10. Establish an institution-wide faculty task force to review the governances and recommend changes that ensure fair and consistent policies and practices over the next three years. Not achieved. Though no task force was created, three faculties (Art, Engineering and HSS) worked on revisions to their own governance within the time period covered by the strategic plan. A11. Review curriculum priorities annually and make recommendations for specific faculty lines and determine pedagogical support needs and priorities annually. Partially achieved. The curriculum committees of each of the Schools and HSS review priorities annually as a matter of course and forward needs via the Deans as part of the current budgeting process. However this the language of this goal suggests as an additional level of oversight that was not implemented. 2 A12. Reorganize the Cooper Union Research Foundation as the C.V. Starr Research Foundation at Cooper Union over the next year. Offer competitive faculty grants to support research proposals and provide facilities needed for those that are successful. Focus on research and scholarly activity across the institution, including interdisciplinary work. Offer an organizational support structure for research centers. Achieved. This was accomplished through several legal procedures in 2008. All research centers have a director that report to the C. V. Starr Research Foundation. All administrative tasks are covered centrally through the Foundation office and, in addition, the Foundation covers Architecture, Art, and HSS rather than an exclusive focus on Engineering. In addition, effective September 1, 2010 a total of $56,000 for competitively awarded research monies, was made available to all faculty, not only engineering as in the past. The limit for each faculty member is $4,000 per year for monies related to courses and projects combined. GOAL B. Continuously renew academic programs and curricula, while expanding the focus on interdisciplinary and international studies. B1. Conduct an assessment of opportunities offered by the new facilities and propose allocation of resources to capitalize on those opportunities beginning with the budget process for academic year 2010. Achieved. B2. Review changes taking place in individual academic units to assess the impact of aggregate changes on the overall student undergraduate experience and to recommend institution-wide curriculum initiatives, improvements in productivity and elimination of duplicate courses or other efforts, biennially. Partially achieved. The review of student undergraduate experience is the work of faculty standing committees as well as the office of the Dean of Students but the language of this goal suggests the implementation of additional, institution-wide review and there is none. The faculty-student senate has been re-activated, and a subcommittee investigating the possibility of cross-disciplinary course work has been initiated. B3. Conduct comprehensive, rigorous reviews of the each curriculum biennially, examining the alignment of programs with advances in the professions, the needs of society and with other academic goals. Not achieved. Review of some of the specified goals is undertaken in the perennial work of the curriculum committees and review of academic goals is always part of the professional accreditation process. However the biennial specification suggests another formal process that has not been implemented. 3 B4. Plan programs and practices to stimulate and facilitate greater intellectual engagement and collaboration of faculty across disciplinary boundaries over the next two years, and develop and expand interdisciplinary initiatives already underway. Not achieved within the time frame specified. However some progress was made over the strategic plan period including the inauguration of the Menschel faculty award grant and expansion of the Menschel Award for students who work with faculty across the institution. In architecture, The Feltman Seminar in Lighting is now designed as a course that sets aside enrollment of students from the three schools. B5. Further develop and implement initiatives aimed at offering program concentrations for students over the next two years. Partially achieved. Since the Middle States Self-Study, a minor in HSS, in the fields of art history, literature, or history and society, has been made available to Cooper students. Only the School of Architecture has agreed to permit its students to take advantage of the program. More than a dozen Architecture students have applied to the program, and several have now graduated. In the School of Engineering, a Mathematics minor was created in 2009 for students interested in pursuing advanced degrees in mathematics, as well as applications in mathematics. B6. Ensure that a Cooper Union education reflects the growing importance of globalization and offers meaningful intellectual experiences that are international in scope over the next three years. Partially achieved. Most changes to the syllabi of required courses in the four faculties reflect this concern over the strategic plan period. In addition the experience of the faculty, the origins of the students, and the educational resources of New York City also shift educational perspectives in a global direction. The School of Architecture’s four semester History sequence is global in scope, and incorporates study of the great works of non-western architecture into the syllabus of each semester. In HSS, new courses include the interdisciplinary social science course Cooper Union World Forum, a course on comparative world cities and the history of the modern Middle East. The Art History requirement has been reworked to require electives in non-western art. In the School of Engineering many courses account for global impacts. B7. Expand opportunities for students to study a range of foreign languages. Not achieved. The language instruction